Advertisment Stalking

On my quest to find a graduation dress, I feel like I’ve been stalked. I visited all sorts of online clothing stores. I went to Modcloth, JC Penney, Forever 21 and some random ones I’ve never heard of and can’t remember the names of. When I leave those sites though, I’m still followed by the picture of the dress I just looked at and chose not to buy. I’m sure if I bought it, it would still be plastered all over my email and news site advertisement boxes.

It’s not that the picture of something I like bothers me. In fact I think being reminded of what I’ve seen has a chance of working. But when advertisements of things I’ve just looked at pop up, I feel watched. Having a computer keep track of what I’ve been searching online feels like an invasion of privacy.

This comes back to the idea of permission advertising.  I haven’t asked to have this information tracked, though by getting on my computer, I know it will happen. I tried to think of something that I would prefer. In reality, what I would prefer is to be left alone. Modcloth doesn’t have to remind me of the dress I saw online. I think about how much I like it all the time. When I have money, I may buy it, but I don’t have the money now.

But here is an idea anyway. What if these advertisers had me log in to look at their selections and then emailed me to tell me they were running low and I better get on it if I want to buy. Though this might work for my favorite sites, I wouldn’t want to create an account for every site I visited online. What if I could make an account for just the sites I visited most? You might think of these companies as my love brands. Then I could chose whether I wanted email updates on items I was looking at. It sounds fair to me. I don't mind the reminder of a product I like, but when I feel stalked, I start to have a bad view of the company I used to love. So advertisers, just ask.

Pepsi, Coke and SodaStream Compete on Game Day

I actually hate football and I'm not quite sure why I decided to watch the Super Bowl this year. Maybe it's because this is the first year in a long time I've been able to watch it or maybe it's because I need some ideas for this blog. Anyway, one of the first commercials I watched was one by Coke. It showed security footage of people stealing kisses, attacking friends with hugs, returning money that had been dropped and all sorts of other daily acts of kindness.  It then tells people to "look at the world a little differently." I thought the commercial was cute, but was a bit surprised that they picked this as their Super Bowl commercial. Aren't Super Bowl commercials supposed to be utterly ridiculous?

Well I did a bit more research and found that the primary Coke Super Bowl commercial was about a cowboy, some showgirls and some badlanders speeding through the desert to get their hands on a giant Coke. That made more sense. The commercial prompted the audience to go online and vote, so I did. I voted for the showgirls and then spent some time "sabotaging" the cowboys and badlanders.

In all honesty, I didn't find the commercial particularly enticing.  I preferred the kiss thefts and hug bombardments. I thought there had to be some reward for me to go online and vote. I don't have any investment in these characters, so why would I go online unless there is some kind of reward. Well, there wasn't any reward. You just vote and then you sabotage the other teams.  Getting people to go online is a great tactic. It gives people the opportunity to get more information and shows that these people are truly invested in your products. I think encouraging people to visit multiple digital promotion formats is great, but you need to give the viewer a reason to care. Either the viewer needs to get a reward, like extra Coke rewards, or they need to be invested in the characters, like our friend, the Geico Gecko.If I had been seeing these characters for several months, I might have thought that I would get something particularly funny online. I didn't.

The Pepsi commercial decided to mock the Coke commercial by having the cowboys, showgirls and badlanders on set trying to get Pepsi out of the Pepsi vending machine with the Coke machine standing unused. It's a pretty good hack at Coke and it was kind of funny. There was no interactivity to it, but a viewer won't soon forget that Coke got bested by Pepsi at the Super Bowl.

For me, SodaStream comes out as the true winner, though maybe not the winner in the view of most people. When I googled the 2013 Coke Super Bowl commercial, I found a SodaStream commercial directed at Coke and Pepsi drinkers. The SodaStream commercial turned out to be very effective. It showed a Pepsi worker unloading a truck and a Coke worker unloading a truck. They were racing to beat each other into the store, but as they got near the door, the bottles started to pop and deflate. Then they say "With SodaStream, we could have saved 500 million bottles on game day alone." The growing trend of sustainability is put on center stage with this commercial. It makes the viewer feel very good about SodaStream and not so great about the two biggest soda brands in the U.S.. In my opinion, SodaStream bested both Pepsi and Coke at this years Super Bowl.